Immigration law was never meant to run through federal district courts—and that’s no accident. Congress explicitly stripped district courts of jurisdiction over immigration cases because, quite frankly, federal judges have no business making ad hoc immigration policy from the bench. Yet, time and again, activist attorneys have tried to drag immigration disputes into district court, knowing full well it’s a legal avenue Congress closed for a reason.
As Mahmoud Khalil’s case winds its way through the courts, it’s time to confront why Congress shut district courts out of immigration law—and why their recent defiance marks a troubling breach of that boundary.
Congress Shut the Door—Activists Keep Picking the Lock
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), Congress established that immigration cases are to be handled through the administrative process—first before an immigration judge, then before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), and finally in the federal circuit courts. District courts? Nowhere in that hierarchy.
Why? Because allowing district judges—who may have no expertise in immigration law—to rule on deportation cases creates a fractured, inconsistent, and politicized mess. Congress recognized this and enacted sweeping reforms, most notably the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, which explicitly removed district court jurisdiction over deportation orders. The entire purpose of these reforms was to stop what we are seeing today: activist attorneys venue-shopping for a friendly district judge who will override federal immigration enforcement.
And yet, here we are.
Habeas Corpus: A Procedural Battering Ram Against Immigration Law
One of the primary tools activist lawyers use to circumvent jurisdictional limits is the writ of habeas corpus. In theory, habeas is a safeguard against unlawful detention by the state. In practice, in the immigration context, it’s been weaponized to stall—and even thwart—lawful deportations by dragging cases into district court, where sympathetic judges often rule far beyond their statutory authority.
Traditionally, habeas corpus was reserved for extreme cases: when someone is held without charges, detained beyond the expiration of a lawful sentence, or imprisoned by a court that lacked jurisdiction in the first place. It’s a shield against tyrannical imprisonment—not a sandbox for relitigating lawful deportation orders. Yet, in today’s immigration context, habeas actions are being stretched far beyond that historic purpose. Simply disagreeing with the executive branch’s enforcement priorities—or facing removal after due process—is enough to trigger a habeas claim and grind the system to a halt.
This is precisely what happened in Mahmoud Khalil’s case. His attorneys filed for habeas relief not because of unlawful detention but because it gave them an opening to get a district judge to intervene in a case outside that court’s jurisdiction. It’s a legal shell game: keep moving the pieces until they land before the right judge.
And it’s far from an isolated case. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently detained Badar Khan Suri, an Indian citizen and doctoral student at Georgetown University, for allegedly spreading Hamas propaganda online. Despite the national security implications, Suri’s attorneys ran the same habeas playbook—filing in district court to halt removal proceedings.
And it worked. Judge Patricia Giles issued an order barring ICE from deporting Suri, stating he “shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court issues a contrary order.”
More telling still was how Georgetown University chose to respond. A university spokesman told the BBC that Suri had been granted a visa “to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan” and that the school was “not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity.”
It was the Sgt. Schultz defense—“I know nothing!”—from one of America’s top universities, willfully blind as a foreign national allegedly spread terrorist propaganda on their watch.
The Suri case illustrates how thoroughly district courts have been co-opted into the activist legal network’s strategy. They are no longer passive arbiters of law—they are now active participants in obstructing immigration enforcement through procedural end-runs around Congress’s jurisdictional framework.
And Congress anticipated this maneuver. Under the REAL ID Act of 2005, Congress explicitly barred district courts from hearing habeas corpus petitions in immigration cases. The statute states:
A petition for review filed with an appropriate court of appeals… shall be the sole and exclusive means for judicial review of an order of removal.
And further:
Judicial review of all questions of law and fact… including interpretation and application of constitutional and statutory provisions… shall be available only in judicial review of a final order… and shall be governed only by [8 U.S.C. § 1252].
Activist attorneys often argue that constitutional claims—such as alleged due process violations—should carve out an exception, allowing them to bypass the REAL ID Act and head straight to district court. But that’s a misread of the law. The statute is explicit: judicial review of “all questions of law or fact, including interpretation and application of constitutional… provisions” must go through the federal courts of appeals—not district courts.
The Supreme Court affirmed this in DHS v. Thuraissigiam (2020), holding that the REAL ID Act constitutionally channels all review of removal orders—including constitutional claims—into the appellate courts, not district courts. Constitutional claims are not a free pass to override immigration law—they’re part of the same streamlined judicial process Congress put in place.
These provisions were designed to prevent jurisdictional gamesmanship and ensure that deportation cases are handled consistently at the appellate level—not through scattered rulings by district judges with no immigration mandate.
The Danger of Letting District Judges Hijack Immigration Policy
This is a high-stakes power struggle over who controls immigration policy: Congress and the Executive Branch, or unelected district judges willing to override both.
There’s a reason immigration law isn’t entrusted to the whims of politically inclined district judges. If every deportation case could be hauled into district court, enforcement would grind to a halt. Congress deliberately vested immigration authority in Article II administrative officers, with a judicial review process that bypasses Article III district courts entirely.
Short-circuiting that framework is far more insidious than simple judicial overreach—it undermines democratic principles and dismantles the carefully structured system Congress created. The result? A patchwork of rulings from individual judges injecting personal ideology into national policy—well outside their constitutional role. And in many cases, those judges were appointed by political opponents of the very president charged with enforcing immigration law.
We’ve already seen the chaos this creates. Judges issue last-minute stays on deportations, override executive branch determinations, and, in some cases, outright block entire categories of enforcement actions. The Khalil and Suri cases are just the latest examples of activist lawfare aimed at undermining immigration law, not enforcing it.
Time for the Supreme Court to Body-Check the Lower Courts
The abuse of jurisdiction in immigration cases is a direct attack on Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate immigration—and a broader assault on the president’s ability to execute the law. Congress deliberately removed district courts from this process for a reason, and their creeping re-entry through habeas petitions threatens to undo decades of legal precedent and constitutional balance.
The Supreme Court must intervene decisively. It’s time for an extreme body check on rogue actions by certain district court judges who have taken it upon themselves to rewrite immigration policy from the bench. Congress built a streamlined process for immigration review through the appellate courts—not a revolving door for ideological litigation in district court.
If the Supreme Court fails to act and rein in the lower courts, the president will lose the ability to enforce the law, and Congress will effectively surrender its legislative authority. Immigration policy will no longer be governed by statute or national interest but—using a term fashionable in today’s lexicon—by oligarchs in black robes.
The judiciary must stay in its lane, or it will drive the rule of law off a cliff.
And with all due respect to the Chief Justice, the gravest threat to the judiciary’s legitimacy isn’t external pressure—it’s coming from inside the chambers of certain federal district courts.
Charlton Allen is an attorney, former chief executive officer, and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is the founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and the host of the Modern Federalist podcast. X: @CharltonAllenNC
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